Regina King names her favourite movie of the 1990s: “We can just leave it right there”
Akin to the New Hollywood movement, which had changed everything in the late 1960s and 1970s, the 1990s were a monumental decade for American cinema when a wave of independent and boundary-pushing films rose to popularity.
While movies like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider, and The Godfather made an indelible mark on the film industry, once we entered the age of blockbuster movies with the success of Star Wars in the ‘80s, things started feeling a little backwards for mainstream cinema. Everything started to feel more capitalistic, with franchises increasingly popping up alongside huge, shiny blockbusters that lacked the grit of the New Hollywood era.
The ‘90s gave us a semblance of hope for a return to form, marked by Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape kicking things off in 1989, the indie hit being provocative and low-budget suggested that movies made without much Hollywood fanfare could actually do well amid this big-budget landscape, and subsequently, the indie boom of the ‘90s was underway.
Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and Christopher Nolan all got their start making movies on small budgets during this time, while movements within this indie boom, like New Queer Cinema, reflected a period of innovation and experimentation. There were certainly more niches available which had the chance to do well, too, like the buddy film, which emerged with more depth than it perhaps had in the ‘80s.
Regina King, who made her film debut in 1991’s Boyz in the Hood, appeared in a classic comedy a few years into her career, and decades on, she still considers it one of the finest movies of the ‘90s. The actor got her start on television, appearing in the show 227 for five years, but the ‘90s was really the decade that allowed her the chance to become a movie star.
So, before King was the Oscar-winning icon she is today, she made an early film appearance in Friday, a buddy comedy that has inspired plenty of memes in more recent years, being the origin of ‘Bye Felisha’, and stands as one of the most beloved entries into the genre.
Written by Ice Cube and DJ Pooh, the pair wanted to make a hood film that felt true to their own experiences, imbuing the script with a sense of humour that they thought was missing from other hood movies. Ice Cube and Chris Tucker star as two lazy friends who get themselves caught up in some drug-related debts, with the need to score just $200, which becomes the difference between life and death. With its quotable script and characters who feel recognisable and loveable, Friday soon attracted praise, and it even spawned several sequels that played into the stoner comedy genre of the early 2000s.
King played Dana, the sister of Ice Cube’s Craig, whom he attempts to borrow the money from, and reflecting on the film for a tier-ranking of ‘90s movies for Complex, she put it in the highest category, saying, “‘Cause I mean, y’all already know. Friday is a classic, cult classic. I don’t even need to say anything. We can just leave it right there”.
She’s not wrong, as it really is a beloved ‘90s favourite, and its longevity as a quotable, meme-able comedy really is the ultimate proof.
